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Lenovo ThinkPad X100e Enhanced

Lenovo has equipped its 11.6in laptop with an AMD CPU, but unlike many AMD-based sub-notebooks, it's a dual-core part, the 1.6GHz Turion Neo X2 L625. The upshot is a more nippy response to your commands.

Unlike all the other notebooks here, the X100e is starkly utilitarian in its looks, but is appealing in an all flat faces, all straight lines, all matte kind of way. No frivolous curves here - or HDMI output, for that matter. But you get all the other important ports, mobile broadband and one of the best keyboard and trackpad combos around - plus the ThinkPad nipple too. And a matte screen. Points lost for including a 32-bit OS, though.

Packard Bell Butterfly XS

Packard Bell - now part of Acer - is the only vendor that equips its 11.6in notebook with an optical drive. The additional weight amounts to 100g or so - not much, essentially - and it doesn't really bulk up the machine any.

Being an Acer, it's well made, but the use of a single-core processor - a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron 743 - slows things down, especially for running multiple apps. Having only 2GB of memory doesn't help either. The screen looks good; the flat, broad keys are nice to type on; and it comes with a 64-bit OS. Even the trackpad isn't bad.